This blog is maintained by two authors from the Great American Midwest

Monday, March 13, 2006

March Madness!

I can hardly keep my head on straight! One of my favorite times of year is here and my desk is covered with stats and brackets, brackets, brackets! Time for all freedom loving Americans to shut up and put their money where their mouths are in the most illegal fashion - the office pool (or online if you please).

Can you imagine if college football ever did the right thing and had a tournament like every other organized sport to determine its champion? I would probably take those days off work because I would cease to function as a normal human at the workplace.

Of course two thirds of the staff here at Life in the Great Midwest will be cheering the beloved Illinois Fighting Illini to our second consecutive final four while the other third of the staff will be wallowing in their beer after a quick second round exit by the hated Ohio State Buckeyes.

But wait...now we can all watch our favorite teams LIVE no matter the time or place! CBS Sportsline with the NCAA has created a service that gives you live streaming games on your computer - click here for details. I signed up early and got a VIP pass which gets you in line first into the virtual arena. This will be great mostly for the first and second rounds especially for folks that don't live in the normal coverage area (like me) for their favorite team. Later in the tournament it doesn't matter as much as the games are fewer. But a very cool idea indeed, and the price was definitely right - zero dollars and zero cents. Hey, I pay for unlimited access anyway, why not? This will definitely curtail productivity at work for thousands of Americans but not me - the Illini play on Thursday- night and Saturday.